Amber Abreu in court
with her public defender (right) on January 24.
(Photo: Deborah Hammond/AP)

FEBRUARY 22 – On
January 6, 18-year-old Amber Abreu went
to the hospital in Lawrence, Massachusetts after trying to terminate a
pregnancy by taking a drug, misoprostol, that is a key component of the
abortion
pill RU-486. The result was a miscarriage. The doctors rushed the 1-1/4
pound
expelled fetus to the Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston, where
it
remained alive for four days. The police, meanwhile, went after Amber
using an
archaic law dating back to the 1840s to charge her with “procuring a
miscarriage.”
Cops dragged Abreu into court in shackles and then held her in the
state’s
maximum security prison at Framingham for days until friends and
relatives
could come up with $15,000 bail. The young woman, a recent immigrant
from the
Dominican Republic, faces seven years in jail on this outrageous
charge. But
the state wants to go even further. According to the Boston Globe
(25
January), “Prosecutors said that Abreu may be charged with homicide,”
for which
she could face a sentence of life behind bars. This whole prosecution
is an
obscene miscarriage of justice.

Amber
Abreu is innocent. We demand that all
charges against her be dropped. The crime here is to
prosecute the teenage immigrant for what should be every woman’s right.
You
don’t have to go back to the Salem, Mass. witch trials of the 17th
century to
find examples of the hideous persecution of women. The judicial
victimization
of Amber Abreu is a witchhunt by anti-abortion forces. We demand the
abolition
of all laws outlawing or restricting abortion. For free abortion on
demand!

Amber Abreu
came to the
United States 18 months ago, obtained a general equivalency degree and
started
to study at Northern Essex Community College, taking English as a
Second
Language. Far from being a murderer, she is a victim of the maze of
legal
restrictions imposed on women seeking to terminate an unwanted
pregnancy.
Having had a prior abortion, which cost $200, she didn’t want to ask
her mother
to pay that again. So she took a drug, known by the brand name Cytotec,
that is
freely available over the counter in the Dominican Republic and widely
used
there by women as a home remedy in a country where abortion is illegal.
Amber
was between 23 and 25 weeks pregnant. Since abortion is illegal in
Massachusetts after 24 weeks, so the prosecutors are awaiting a
determination
by the medical examiner of how far advanced the fetus was in order to
charge
Abreu with homicide. This is an abomination.

It is
also part of the on-going war on abortion rights in the U.S. The case
of Amber
Abreu highlights the fact that what’s at issue is not just the legal
“right to
choose,” it’s about the actual access to abortion services. In many
states laws
have been passed to prevent teenage women from terminating a pregnancy
without
notifying their parents. Clinics have been besieged by right-wing “god
squads”
seeking not only to harass women seeking an abortion, but also to shut
the
facilities down. In a several Midwestern and Mountain states this has
succeeded
to the point that there are only one or two abortion clinics left. On
top of
this, the anti-abortion bigots resort to outright murder, posting the
names and
addresses of abortion doctors on the Internet, shooting them in their
homes and
bombing clinics. Right-wing terrorist John Salvi killed two workers at
a
Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Brookline and wounded five others
in
1994. The Internationalist Group calls for militant working-class
defense of
abortion clinics.

Massachusetts
has been denounced by theocratic reactionaries as a “land of Satan”
because in
2003 and 2004 a state supreme court ruling made the commonwealth the
only state
in the country where gay couples can legally marry. At the same time,
however,
recent ex-governor (and now presidential contender) Mitt Romney vetoed
every
law expanding abortion rights and now declares himself a
“right-to-lifer” (as
well as opposing same-sex marriage and even civil unions for gays).
Even many
liberals, like Democratic senator and former presidential candidate
John Kerry,
declare they are “personally” opposed to a woman’s right abortion.
Rather than
frontally taking on the vast array of forces opposed to abortion,
extending
from Catholic and evangelical Christian right-wingers to liberal
Democrats,
various bourgeois feminist groups have responded by fudging their
language and
supporting one or another “pro-choice” bourgeois politician.

The fact
that Amber Abreu
could be jailed for up to seven years or spend life in prison for
trying to put
a stop to an unwanted pregnancy is a horrendous atrocity. Yet the
“mainstream”
feminists haven’t exactly rushed to highlight her case. According to an
article
by Juliette Terzieff in Women’s e-News (12 February), the
Cambridge-based Abortion Access Project has helped Abreu “identify
medical and
legal experts to support her public defender,” and the American Civil
Liberties
Union is “monitoring the case” and has “spoken with the family about
available
services and support.” But where is the national outcry over the
hideous persecution
of this 18-year-old immigrant who symbolizes the plight of young women,
often
terribly alone, who face desperate decisions that can ruin their lives?
Columnist
Eileen McNamara wrote a piece in the Boston Globe (28 January)
titled
“Bad Choices All Around,” referring to “one teenager’s bad choices,” as
if this
“tragedy” was in any way Amber’s fault! But McNamara at least
recognizes this
as “an indictment of a culture that tells all women abortion is their
legal,
constitutionally protected right, but tolerates a lack of access for
the
neediest women.”

With the
addition of two raving
anti-abortion bigots to the United States Supreme Court, Samuel Alito
and Chief
Justice John Roberts, right-wingers are gearing up a drive to overturn
the 1973
Roe v. Wade decision which legalized abortion in the U.S.
While voters
in South Dakota overwhelmingly rejected a near-total ban on abortions,
anti-abortion forces have introduced new bills there. Around the
country,
“pro-life” reactionaries have been pushing to enact state laws which
would
outlaw abortion in almost all cases, even, in Georgia, in cases where
the
mother’s life is in danger. (The Georgia bill calls for life in prison
or the
death penalty for women who have abortions and the doctors who provide
them.)
They want a total ban at the state level so that the minute Roe v.
Wade
is struck down, abortion will effectively be outlawed across large
parts of the
U.S. The response of the bourgeois feminists has been to crow that in
last
year’s mid-term elections, “pro-choice” Democrats were elected! “We
should
celebrate these electoral wins,” writes Nancy Keenan, president of
“NARAL
Pro-Choice America,” which used to be the National Abortion and
Reproductive
Rights League but appeased the reactionaries by removing the word
abortion from
its name.

The NARAL
leader ascribed
the electoral “successes” to the fact that “the public has grown tired
of the
divisiveness on this topic.” So now these “pro-choice” advocates are
calling
for “prevention-based” measures like birth control that they hope will
win
support from some anti-abortion elements. In doing so they are
following the
lead of Democratic Party politicians like Hillary Clinton, who in a
speech on
the January 2005 anniversary of Roe v. Wade sought “common
ground” with
those who hold that there are “are no circumstances under which any
abortion should
ever be available” (!), calling for “assistance” so that “the choice
guaranteed
under our Constitution either does not ever have to be exercised or
only in
very rare circumstances.” So where Bill Clinton declared that abortions
should
be “safe, legal and rare,” Hillary Clinton wants them to be safe, legal
and
never!! But what would one expect from the war hawk who joined Bush in
justifying the invasion of Afghanistan with hypocritical talk about
safeguarding the rights of Afghan women (who are still imprisoned in
head-to-toe burkas) and has repeatedly voted to support the
U.S.
imperialist invasion and colonial occupation of Iraq?

As the
liberal Democrats
and bourgeois feminists seek “common ground” with right-wing
reactionaries,
many leftists and would-be socialists tag along behind, using the
language of
“choice” instead of demanding that abortion be available on the simple
request
of the woman, at no cost to her, in safe and high quality medical
facilities.
For even the simple democratic right to abortion is profoundly affected
by
economic questions and legal status. As Globe columnist
McNamara wrote,
“A well-heeled suburban 18-year-old who chooses to terminate a
pregnancy need
only write a check.” But this “choice,” even where it is legally
possible, does
not mean real access to abortion for those without financial means.
Democratic
president Jimmy Carter signed the Hyde Amendment which banned the use
of
Medicaid funds for abortions. Today young women still die from the
complications of back-alley or self-induced abortions. Many immigrant
women,
especially those lacking documents, hesitate to go to a hospital for
fear of
deportation. Amber Abreu was lucky she could get medical care, but now
she
faces years if not life in prison.

Racism
is a fundamental factor here as well. White prosecutors in Lawrence,
Massachusetts want to jail 18-year-old Abreu, supposedly out of concern
for the
“life” of an aborted fetus. In Kansas City, Missouri a year ago, police
pulled
over 32-year-old Sofia Salva, a black Sudanese immigrant, for traffic
citations, but refused to take her to a hospital even though a
videotape of the
arrest shows her pleading at least a dozen times that she was bleeding
and
having a miscarriage. “How is that my problem?” says a woman cop. After
holding
Salva for nine hours in a jail cell, they finally sent her to a
hospital where
she delivered a premature baby that lived for one minute. Naturally, no
charges
have been brought against the killer cops. Former Black Panther and
renowned
radical journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal wrote in a February 4 column from
Pennsylvania’s death row: “When I heard this story, I thought of the
motto,
‘protect and serve’ – and wondered, ‘protect who?’ – ‘serve who?’” The
answer
is that the police protect the property and interests of the
capitalists and
serve the interests of the bourgeois ruling class against those of the
oppressed and exploited majority.

The
question of the rights
of working-class immigrant women is central to the history of Lawrence,
Mass.,
the mill town on the banks of the Merrimack River which was the site of
the
1912 strike by 20,000 textile workers that ended in a stunning victory
for the
strikers. The walkout began over wage cuts when the mill bosses slashed
the pay
of their workers (most of them women and children) because the
legislature
restricted children’s working hours to 54 a week. The workers’ demand
was for
54 hours’ work for 56 hours’ pay! Even though it was relatively small,
the pay
cut could buy a few loaves of bread for the hard-pressed workers. The
women
workers waved signs proclaiming, “We Want Bread and Roses Too!” The
strike
committee, led by the radical Industrial Workers of the World (IWW),
issued
strike leaflets in more than a dozen languages to reach the Italian,
French-Canadian, Portuguese, Polish, German, Austrian, Belgian,
Russian,
Syrian, English, Irish, Jewish and American strikers and hold them
together for
ten weeks.

At a key
point during the
protracted struggle, the strikers decided to send their children to
supporters
in other cities to care for them for the duration. As a trainload of
children
arrived in New York’s Grand Central Station they were greeted by a
crowd
singing the workers’ anthem, The Internationale. Lawrence
authorities
accused the strikers of exploiting their children (what of the
exploitation by
the mill owners?) and as a group of 40 children and their mothers
marched to a
train, they were set upon and viciously clubbed by the police. This
dramatized
the plight of the Lawrence strikers and contributed greatly to the
eventual
victory. Today, working people should protest the vicious persecution
of Amber
Abreu which throws a sharp light on the plight of poor immigrant and
working
women.

At a
general level, many
leftists pose the issue of women’s liberation as a purely
bourgeois-democratic
issue, instead of recognizing, as Marxists do, that the oppression of
women is
bound up in the social conditions of capitalism. It is rooted in
institution of
the family, which is one of the mainstays of capitalism and a bedrock
for
conservative values. Women’s oppression is intensified and compounded
for poor
and working-class women, who must endure a “double shift” of work, at
low
wages, followed by family care. Black, Latina and Asian women face a
triple
oppression as they face the added burdens of racism, while immigrants
lack even
the most basic formal democratic rights. The condition of women in
semi-colonial countries is far worse: every year the number of women
hospitalized after unsafe illegal abortions include 288,700 in Brazil;
106,500
in Mexico; 80,000 in the Philippines; 71,800 in Bangladesh; and 16,500
in the
tiny Dominican Republic. To put an end to this horror story, the League
for the
Fourth International fights for workers revolution throughout the
capitalist
world.

Revolutionary
Marxists emphasize that to liberate women from the many forms of
oppression
they have suffered since the dawn of class society it is necessary to
fight for
their full integration into social labor, with equal pay for equal
work; for
free, 24-hour day care; for free, voluntary communal laundry and dining
facilities; for free abortion on demand and free, high-quality health
care for
all; and for full citizenship rights for all immigrants. Many of these
measures
were included in the program of the Russian Bolsheviks led by Lenin and
Trotsky, and were begun to be realized following the October Revolution
of
1917. Carrying out such a program would be immensely easier today. But
this
requires a break from the capitalist parties and the formation of a
revolutionary
workers party that fights for a workers government, where those who
labor rule.
The Trotskyists stand for women’s liberation through socialist
revolution. n